Microsoft removes documentation for switching to a local account in Windows 11
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I’m a Mac user now but when I pull up windows 11 on my kid’s or wife’s laptop, it feels like that free-pc dot com again, only it’s in every person’s PC. I’m genuinely shocked at the amount of trash that barrages a common user in windows, and shocked that Microsoft gets away with it.
My 14 year old gets barraged with not just co-pilot but a bunch of news and trash clickbait that is straight inappropriate for kids to see.
I’ve had to remove it all twice but with every significant update, somehow my settings get reversed and we’re back at square one.
I tried even using local accounts but it causes significant issues in the OS.
If you’d told me in 1999 that free-pc.com was the dystopian digital future we’d all be living in, I’d have laughed you out of the room - but that’s exactly what we have. The only difference is that the PC isn’t free. We are.
Sadly all I could say was "yeah, that's why I use Linux"
And yet now ... he barely does anything with computers besides play freemium mobile games on his phone. Doesn't email too much anymore, doesn't have online logins to just about anything (like his bank accounts), and can't handle basic debugging of tech issues anymore. I think people just give up at some point and stop trying to stay current with this stuff.
Or, they realize that 90% of it adds zero value to their lives. When you get older, you really do start thinking about how fast the years went by and how they are going to be gone before you know it, and do you want to spend any significant fraction of that time sitting at a computer, yet again wasting hours on "debugging tech issues" that a 20-something developer in California or Oregon has yet again foisted upon the world.
Also as you get older you have figured out that if you don't want to do something, you just pretend you don't know how, and eventually someone else will do it for you.
Let's hope this becomes more of a thing.
No point being made. Just an interesting tidbit I remembered.
The news sources that get pumped into Windows are similarly as bad. Celebrity sexual content, openly fake political propaganda, scare mongering nonsense, just truly depraved garbage.
I don't understand how these organizations reputations survive this. They're not just polluting our own systems with their depraved content, they're intentionally* targeting children with wildly inappropriate sexual content.
This might seem radical but I think there should be severe criminal penalties for corporate executives who allow this kind of thing to happen. Until billionaires are truly brought to justice for the media hellscape they design to pad their billions, we will be completely at their mercy. I harbor few good feelings towards China and their system but they know how to disappear a billionaire who is "too big to be good" and magically the same services' algorithms don't push sexual content to children there. Tiktok* has a completely different algorithm and pushes completely different content. Maybe they figured it out.
I mean, throwing co-pilot into everything is literally the 2024 version of inlcuding IE on everything in the 90s and MS does it with impunity because they can.
More specifically, what intrusive features are enabled that aren't shown as an option to deselect on a clean install?
edit: I mean they had to remove Solitaire and Minesweeper to save space...
Don't worry, you can still install Minesweeper from the official store ... with ads and play-to-win microtransactions. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40647278
If you have the freedom to use your PC as you please, they can't force their software down your throat. They know that means no one will lock into their software because it sucks.
To make your settings stick, use group policies instead of Control Panel, Settings and the registry. It's the much more stable and better documented equivalent of MacOS' "defaults."
> I tried even using local accounts but it causes significant issues in the OS.
I have never not used a local account, so I'm unsure what you're saying, because it hasn't caused any issues at all, let alone significant ones. Can you provide an example?
brew install theThingIActuallyWant
Linux, with complete user control, is better. It has rough edges, still, but your computer is your own. MacOS is the better of the two consumer offerings. Windows is now the sleaziest of all, and I'm sad about that.
I've been a gamer and PC enthusiast for more than 40 years. I've used Windows since there was a Windows, and MS-DOS before that. My first "real" computer was an IBM XT clone running MS-DOS 3.3. I went to the store for every upgrade. Microsoft Bob was the first thing I passed on, but I've used all the others. I was beyond excited for Windows 95, I ran NT, and all of it's variants. I loved Windows 2000. ME, 7, 8, 10... I still have licenses. I won't touch 11. I've switched to Linux on my desktop, and won't be going back. I use Macs for work, and for the family PC.
Microsoft Office is still the best office suite out there, but I'll run it on Mac or through Bottles on Linux. I won't let Windows on my hardware anymore if I can help it.
Homebrew is a third-party tool neither written nor endorsed by Apple that does hacky things and causes breakage with things as simple and fundamental as a [multi user install].
> Settings for notifications and obnoxious start-up stuff, all in one place and in your hands, not Microsoft's and in most cases, not even Apple's. It is better than Windows.
Right-click on Start - Task Manager - Startup apps. Right-click on notification icon - Notifications settings. I am not "off." You just don't know Windows. I know MacOS with all its illogical UX.
No idea why you brought up Linux. It's [less secure] than both macOS and Windows and much less secure than Android and iOS, so I wouldn't use it as a desktop OS to begin with, and it's not really relevant to the discussion.
[multi user install]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41840479/how-to-use-home...
[less secure]: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html
And it's more like:
Task Manager | Startup Apps
Start menu > Start up shortcuts
Service Manager... disable services set to run on start
Registry settings for on-login and on-start up items
Multiple layers of registry settings for other run-once or run-if apps that can install or configure any of the above and make things come back.
I know Windows just fine (I've been a programmer/developer/software engineer/you name the title for 30 years), and it's become a never ending whack-a-mole every time there was a system update. And it is far more difficult to keep Windows doing what you want it to and keeping it from doing what you don't, because of Microsoft, than any other operating system. I've watched Windows go from pretty darn good to buggy, messy, and extractive. It is no longer the operating system for me, and I will happily recommend Mac to my family who, by and large, don't game.
UWP requires Microsoft Store or "sideloading" so not used by a lot of applications. Windows is not open source, there could be countless vulnerabilities and backdoors. Windows users still download installers from Web, they are phishing targets.
Linux desktop is mostly open source software. Raise of closed source software would bring Android like security.
Laughable.
Which kinds of issues? Honest question. I don't use Windows 11 a lot on my personal laptop but I set it up with a local account and haven't noticed any major issues in my limited use.
I don't use OneDrive or other MS services on it, though.
Writing this as a die-hard anti-Apple person, and I was one of a few Windows-based developers in my prev job (there are a few tools on Windows I liked that didn't have good counterparts on other platforms), but seeing where things are going, and having worked on a MBP for last few years, I'm not going back to Windows.
Sure, they're great at PR and marketing themselves as "private" but they're just as bad as the rest of them. Also fan boys, I'd be willing to bet if Apple launches a "private personalized ad platform", the fanboys will be singing its praise instead of being appalled.
Apple's $10B of ad revenue primarily comes from promoting apps within its App Store, similar to how grocery stores charge for premium shelf space or end-of-aisle displays. This is an in-store, first-party system where data collected is used exclusively within Apple's ecosystem to personalize the user experience. These ads aim to increase app visibility within the App Store, maintaining a controlled and private "first party" environment.
In contrast, Google’s $300B advertising ecosystem extends far beyond its own platforms, surveilling and tracking user behavior across millions of websites and even physical locations. Google integrates with 85% of credit card transactions in the U.S., creating extensive user profiles that feed into a global ad tech and data brokering network with thousands of data brokers. This system supports highly targeted ads that follow users across the internet and beyond, typically sending users to third-party sites and services.
The difference lies in the scope and method of data collection and usage: Apple’s approach is about, and data remains within, its ecosystem, while Google’s extends to pervasive cross-platform tracking and profiling.
> if Apple launches a "private personalized ad platform", the fanboys will be singing its praise
This is indeed likely, since as an example, Apple spends extra time and energy to prevent even themselves from getting data, such as how they break up your Apple Maps trips directions requests into anonymized segments, to avoid letting themselves capture users' full trips. Apple deliberately makes their own data use more difficult, and in some cases makes certain uses impossible for themselves, to serve users' privacy. When you look at Alphabet or Meta engineering, you see their schemes serve to give them the ad profile data, while making it inaccessible to competitors.
TL;DR:
For both ad platforms and privacy engineering, as the Gus Fring meme goes, these "are not the same".
> as the Gus Fring meme goes, these "are not the same".
Don't people mostly use this meme ironically to derisively compare two things that aren't distinguished by much of anything?
That's exactly what Apple did with their supposed "opt out" work a couple of years back - they take a lot more data than apps on their platform are allowed to.
BTW, they only did that privacy work because they couldn't reach an agreement to get direct cash out of Facebook abusing users on their platform, to spite Meta: https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/12/23303095/apple-meta-faceb...
They know that their home users have likely used and learned about Windows through work. These users see it as the only professional, best in market option.
That seems plausible. Small scale windows installations on there own are not a money maker for them anymore, as evidenced by the scummy adverts to try make up some of the shortfall.
Given that, is it worth the resources to them to make it and test it on many many hardware combinations? They are moving towards Office and VS running on other OSs, SQL Server already runs supported on Linux, VS Code is cross platform, Office is if you count Excel & such having web versions (though they aren't feature complete), so there will be a point when windows in homes and SMEs is not needed as a platform to sell other products and at that point they can let someone else do all that work. They already let Google write their browser, a lot of Devs (including those internal to MS) use Linux tooling via WSL, and they don't care what OS (if any) you run server-side they would just prefer you run the VMs/containers/etc on Azure resources.
I expect they'd still keep making some form of Windows for corporates, but then they can limit the hardware compatibility needs considerably on that area, same for EOM manufacturers who they could foist a lot of that compatibility testing onto.
You're not removing it properly. After I setup my first install of W10 nothing has ever been changed or reverted after any update.
I think I get it - there are plenty of people using Windows as their primary OS and they want bells and whistles while not caring about telemetry. But just.. let people disable things.
IMO fact, that Microsoft is pushing spyware on their users and make it harder and harder to disable it is much more important topic than EU focusing on Apple (which is monopoly inside their ecosystem, but not a provider of "default" software used in offices etc.)
Still trying to delay the upgrade to 11 as long as I can though.
Dual booting would rather defeat the point / message of leaving windows behind for Microsoft’s shenanigans.
I would not go so far as GP as to say that this dark pattern is better or worse than what Microsoft is doing, but I think it is a fair point that a Google/Microsoft account is needed on the biggest mobile/desktop platforms respectively and their attitude to privacy and user agency is somewhere between laissez-faire and contemptuous.
With Android there does at least feel like with F-Droid, different OEMs, alternative apps, the web and even Other android spins that these aren't quite the lockdown that Windows is, although it's fair to say that in either case you shouldn't really be constantly on your guard for the next way that your operating system is going to try to trick you into giving away more of your stuff to them.
It's actually the developers of the app doing that. I make sure to minimize such dependencies.
I can't speak for everyone here, but not all of us use stock ROMs and Google Play Services. I personally use GrapheneOS, which let's you significantly neuter Google's spyware capabilities.
[1] https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DC...
We must be browsing different HNs!
Having WiFi turned on will drain your battery faster by virtue of connecting to WiFi. Even worse, if it's on but not connected, it will periodically look for networks to connect to. The same is true for cellular service.
It's just an incredibly user hostile operating system that only a broken bureaucracy like Microsoft's feudal dynasties can build.
In contrast, I love Android, even more than any desktop Linux, macos, ios, etc. It just works and the notifications are super customizable and Pixel blocks 90% of my spam and texts and the adblock is system wide (via VPN) and it auto updates overnight and just never gets in my way. For every Windows annoyance I've had, there are entire months or years where Android just keeps on working, even across new phones and new major versions.
Google may be the spiest of them all, but at least they can deliver a great user experience and operating system. It's not perfect (I still miss my old style notification shade system controls), but it's a lot less noisy than Windows. A good operating system should stay out of the way, not make itself the center of attention at every possible opportunity.
Google is also an ad company, the bar for their behavior is lower. MS used to be an OS company. Many of the users here remember the time when there was a supplier/customer relationship with MS.
It is probably hard to imagine if you are, like, under 25, but MS actually used to be this kind of interesting company that enabled people doing new, fun things on their computers. Of course they are just another garbage factory now, but it’s hard to update your priors sometimes.
https://blog.system76.com/post/may-flowers-spring-cosmic-sho...
They were already getting to be too much but this is getting crazy.
That sounds like a feature, I’ve got plenty enough games to play that I don’t need to have my machine rootkitted. I swore off of all EA-published games on those grounds 15 years ago so having the information upfront would be a strict improvement.
Other than Warzone and Tarkov (for which I keep a separate drive with Win10), the only things I haven’t quite managed to get sorted yet are (i) a convenient system-wide replacement for the frame limiter in RTSS, and (ii) relatedly, proper frame-pacing when streaming using Sunshine.
Also, Steam seems to have a weird and widespread bug where if you use Big Screen, exit to the desktop mode, then launch BS again, you get like 5fps in the BS front-end itself (after launching a game, it’s fine). The workaround is to just kill the client when you exit Big Screen (usually when your gaming is done anyway).
Really happy I made the switch and fully expect those niggles to get sorted (or my aptitude to improve) in due course. Windows has been shit for a while but recently it’s really crossed over into unbelievably shit.
I think I’m also a bit spoiled by the Steam Deck, where it’s so easy to set and change custom limits. I kind of just want that, for Pop, ha.
As for the frame pacing, try with the beta NVidia drivers (v555) and Wayland, though I don't use Sunshine so I'm not sure if it'll help.
Check out if these updates are all available on Pop, if they are give them a try!
This is what I have in my MangoHud.conf:
fps_limit_method=late
toggle_fps_limit=Shift_R+slash
show_fps_limit
fps_limit=0,45,60,90,120,240
My budget gaming PC is still on Windows and RTSS is a lifesaver: I couldn't stream or record some games with my Intel Arc A580 otherwise, since titles that use DX11 or older rendering technologies typically have worse performance than the more recent ones, ergo I have to stream/record at 30 and cap the framerate anywhere between 30-60 depending on the title, otherwise things get unstable.
Of course, it's not ideal, but is at least workable. A bit odd that the card struggles with games like Ghost Recon Wildlands (DX11, 2017), but not Ghost Recon Breakpoint (Vulkan, 2019) or ones that use DX12 etc. Either that, or when there's a title that's badly coded and doesn't lock framerate properly to the screen refresh rate.
Aside from that, around 90% of the 500ish Steam games I have would actually run on Linux (various indie titles, mostly), at least according to ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com which is pretty nice to see, except for the fact that last I checked something like GOG doesn't run on Linux natively, though thankfully something like Lutris exists.
GOG absolutely does offer native Linux games.
That’s why people seem to recommend Lutris or some other alternatives to access the actual library.
I’ve had a really mixed experience with GoG on Lutris and Heroic - both on Pop and the Steam Deck. I often struggle to get things running. It requires just that little bit more knowledge of what’s happening under the hood than Steam/Proton does, and I often just give up. My library is mostly in Steam anyway. Honestly, EmuDeck has been easier for me to get uo and running than either Heroic or Lutris.
And both Nvidia and AMD have native control software (GeForce Experience and Adrenalin) that bundles a bunch of nice stuff like underclocking, recording, noise suppression, per-game profiles, frame limiter, etc;
On Linux you have GreenWithEnvy and CoreCTRL, but neither are as nice or have even half the features.
Every time I’ve tried it, it has just seemed slow, even on reasonably powerful PCs.
Disclaimer I am not very familiar with Linux for Desktop - but to me this is an indication that we are not yet in the "just works" state for desktop linux.
Or it does just mean that while the Windows recurrent problems (how to create local accounts, disable telemetry, install 3rd party programs, etc.) are just seen as life as normal while Linux problems are seen as such.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/niggle
""" Etymology
First attested in 1599. Origin uncertain, but likely borrowed from dialectal Norwegian nigla (“to be stingy, to busy oneself with trifles”), ultimately from Old Norse hnøggr (“stingy; miserly”), related to Old English hnēaw (“stingy; niggardly”). More at niggard. """
Niggard is unrelated to the racial slur we're thinking of but in fairness I can understand how it would raise eyebrows.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1557349
History certainly loves to rhyme.
Would it be fair to say that a history of raising eyebrows establishes some relationship between otherwise previously unrelated words?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_n...
When the news began circulating on social media, many couldn’t believe it was true––that the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California would remove a longtime professor from a class because a Mandarin word he used correctly in a lesson sounded sort of like a racial slur.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/fight-agai...
The USC story is quite different from the current thread. The historical use of the word “niggard” has been intentionally used in a racist way (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word...), and if you read the WP article, it has quotes speculating that subtle “sophomoric” usage of the word might increase for racial reasons.
So I don’t buy the slippery slope argument, and it seems like the USC story is actually demonstrating that people can be reasonable about where the line is. It might have caused a stir once, but now there is precedent for settling cases of Mandarin confusion more quickly.
It's hyperbole to call this a slippery slope when the exact same thinking that finds niggardly offensive leads to the absurd outcome at USC. Instead of pruning the language of any words that a racist might use as a dog whistle, maybe expect, if not everyone, at least college students to have some notion of context.
> it’s not a compelling example of reasonableness
Why not? The outcome was positive, Patton suffered no serious consequences, and the ability to say foreign words without worrying was affirmed publicly. It could have been much worse, but it wasn’t. There was a temporary misunderstanding followed by some conversation that got it sorted out, no need to worry about that further. Again, the precedent that was set is that using Mandarin is not insensitive or racist. Precedent refers to the outcome, not the temporary misunderstanding. The outcome at USC was not absurd, the outcome was reasonable. The accusation might have been out of line, or just a mistake, but that was the cause, not the outcome.
> are there any other languages about which we should be concerned?
Why would there be? (…especially given the outcome of the USC story) If you read the USC response, you’ll even find it addresses that question directly. It affirms that incidental phonetic similarities across all different languages are pure coincidence and should not result in claims of wrongdoing. It even says the same thing you did, and takes responsibility too, it says college students should have some notion of global context, and it’s college’s job to give them that context.
The case that started this thread is not a cross-language mistake, and it came with evidence of historically racist usage, so it’s different by definition. It’s not the exact same thinking, and I posted some evidence of that. There’s no reason to believe the Mandarin incident will lead to more accusations, and due to being publicized and decided in Patton’s favor, there is reason to believe it won’t happen again, or if it does it will be settled quicker and with less publicity.
I think it is easier, in hindsight, for you to say that Patton didn't suffer serious consequences. If I were in his shoes, being prohibited from teaching his class, disciplined for an absurd accusation and investigated, I would be pretty upset and wondering what the outcome would be.
If these were second graders learning a foreign language, maybe it is understandable that they might titter about a word in that language that is similar to one in English. I think it takes quite a bit of mental contortion to believe that students in a college foreign language class would think that a Mandarin word was insulting to black people because it sounds like an English word.
The reason this story is publicized is not because it's the valuable precedent you assert. It's that it is symptomatic of the ridicule deserved by the reasoning that people should be offended by words with similar sounds and different meanings.
Maybe it would be clearer if you read the whole thing: https://web.archive.org/web/20200922014834/https://www.theat...
I did read the whole article (btw please re-read HN guidelines), which was designed to stir and highlight drama, as newspapers are wont to do. You’re right, the Atlantic story you’re linking to is downplaying the precedent and focusing on the controversy. Even though there’s not that much controversy.
I also read some followup too, obviously, since I wrote some details above about the story that your source doesn’t mention, for example that Patton was not disciplined and was cleared and apologized to, and that the dean who “excoriated” Patten also had to publicly apologize for his hasty & presumptuous email, and admitted he reacted too quickly.
You seem to be insisting on incredulity and outrage, when feelings got out of hand but nothing serious actually happened. That’s kinda the same mistake Patton’s students made.
The school is required to take accusations seriously and investigate. That’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. The dean handled it poorly at first, but people sometimes make mistakes. And it’s also good thing prof Patton was cleared. Almost everything worked like it should have. It doesn’t matter what you or anyone thinks about the validity of the student’s accusation, and the fact that the accusation happened is not somehow going to make anything worse.
Hey, it’s a free country, say whatever words you want, as far as I’m concerned, the consequences are yours to enjoy. You’re right that this shouldn’t have happened, and you’re right that the words we’re discussing did not originate from a racial epithet. But then history happened, replete with a lot of actual racism and words, and in reality new negative associations were formed between unrelated words. Bummer. But complaining about not being able to use one totally anachronistic word now that clearly sounds like a racial slur, and has been used as a racial slur, might seem a bit tone deaf. Arguing that choosing not to say one particular word is going to lead to many more and cause problems is an imagined and absurd end result.
OK. "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
Which is not what you're doing when you reduce the question to saying one particular word is the issue rather than only an example of blindly ignoring context. (Which is not even the case here since we're now offended by niggle, niggardly, niggard and 那个 and who knows what else). The issue is making the language less expressive at the instigation of 1) people who can't understand context and 2) sophomoric racists who take advantage of the people who can't understand context. Neither group should be rewarded by ceding the use of completely harmless and expressive words.
There’s that slippery slope again. English isn’t getting less expressive, that will never happen. That right there is the “imagined, absurd end result”. The number of English words that have become politically incorrect over our lifetimes is completely dwarfed by 1) the better, more expressive synonyms and alternatives available and 2) the number of new words introduced into English over the same period.
I hear you, and I agree that it’s stupid that a couple of previously unrelated words have become tainted, and they shouldn’t have been. But it’s too late, it happened… in this case, over a hundred years ago.
Nobody is being rewarded. Racist word usage doesn’t seek to remove words from our lexicon. The words don’t actually go away, the choice to use or not use certain words is yours to make. Whether we offer other cultures any respect by choosing to avoid any innocuous words that happen to have a higher probability of being taken the wrong way is purely a personal decision. Which is why arguing about it might not be the best look, even if you’re right, right?
Anyway, there is value in trying to get people to understand that people who innocently use a sound-alike don't intend to offend them. Which is pretty much what John McWhorter has written about many times. The failure to understand context seems to be a big part of many issues of the day.
I totally agree there’s value in sharing context, and helping people not be offended. USC agrees as well now. Good!
The EU is not a single threaded application. They can, and should, be focusing on multiple areas where there is wrongdoing. Both are being egregious and abusive, and need attention. And the EU has shown that it can!
> (which is monopoly inside their ecosystem, but not a provider of "default" software used in offices etc.)
A good phrase to use here would be 'platform abuse'. Focusing on the 'default' is an attempt to justify what they are doing, and I notice it gets used to defend Apple rather than call them out. In the sense that "Oh well, it's their platform, they can do what they want"
Things have changed a lot here. I now regularly buy windows laptops, toss windows and they just work. When there is a hardware problem, it usually takes a few minutes to resolve.
The hard part is realizing that you have to do the EFEI setup and not just try to boot in insecure mode.
I am right now using the Xbox Wireless Dongle with a custom driver (xone), that driver says that it supports audio through audio jack. No audio though. Probally because I am not very experienced in Linux on Desktop.
I am NEVER going back to Windows unless I get a modern version:
* Targeted for professionals / gamers (why call it pro if its just Home without dumb restrictions?) * Offline-first accounts only * Zero ads for Microsoft products (I'll literally pay $50 a year to stop them, and stop the update nagware). * Stop pestering me to update * And this is more important, decouple your OS so you can update while I use it, requiring a restart only under kernel tier changes.
I’ve started recommending it to others, while personally I’m happier with Arch’s more transparent and simplified architecture and development, plus rolling release to avoid mass breakage on full upgrades.
but rolling-release distros does mean one day you might update and reboot and something is broken. it's more maintenance than fedora.
Why does NixOS work for me?
I got attracted to Nix because of the possibility of being on the bleeding edge. According to repology Nix related package repositories are far up and to the right, their own cluster. In fact, only Arch is getting close by, but not being as good in terms of freshness, as can be seen from the position of AUR below [2].
1: https://mihai.page/nixos-and-me/
2: https://repology.org/graph/map_repo_size_fresh.svg - even nixpkgs 24.05 stable is so far ahead of every other repo it's not funny.
1. How friendly is the installer? I can get a second hand machine in which I can afford to nuke the disk and let Nix take it all but what if I need to install it side-by-side with my existing Windows install on my main laptop where I have a custom partitioning scheme? Ubuntu's installer provides sufficient flexibility to able to re-use partitions without overwriting them, allocate whatever mount point I want, resize things etc. I have been using Linux for close to 20 years but fdisk still spooks me.
2. How easy is multi-monitor setup and switching between setups? I have a main monitor that I usually use but occasionally I also use the laptop screen as a second display and sometimes I just use the laptop screen.
3. The 1st link alludes to be able to rollback changes from grub? How? What are my recovery options if I mess up the system?
2. I'm using a laptop with AMD/NVIDIA on Wayland with KDE, this is no problem. This question is in the domain of your display server and compositor, not the base distro.
I choose the previous build from grub, and then rollback my config files from git and rebuild. Every build creates an entry on the boot menu so I can go back to any previous iteration of my setup (I do have it set to only keep the last 15 builds)
1. The installer is Calamares. It's fantastic and fully user-friendly, no need to worry about it.
2. I'll speak for KDE6 which I personally find superior to GNOME. You can have either with NixOS. I don't think there's anything specific to NixOS on multi-monitor functionality. There's a menu accessed either through a keyboard shortcut or system tray that allows any of the 5 permutations laptop/monitor. And it pops up as an OSD menu whenever you connect a monitor. I'd say the functionality is 'done'.
3. I suggest you read up on how Nix works, once you understand it you can understand NixOS better. To summarize, all programs in your system are stored in /nix/store and accessed through symlinks. You don't access /bin/bash, you access the bash executable stored in /nix/store through its symlink in your PATH. And all the symlinks are stored in a single directory. This directory is called a profile. There are multiple profiles. With NixOS, not only just executables but the system configuration data (users, passwords, mounted disks, desktop environment settings, traditionally in /etc) is also stored in profiles. This way you can have multiple 'whole system configuration's all containing different system configurations, arbitrary versions of arbitrary programs, and they don't conflict. During the boot, you can choose between different profiles. It's not limited to grub, systemd-boot also works.
Edit:
I did not know about Kinoite. I am definitely checking it out, sounds similar to what made me interested in Vanilla OS 2
1. with Fedora Atomic you get an operating system with the reliability and resistance to entropy and ability to power wash of Chrome OS, but also the ability to be changed via building your own custom image (its easy, check out BlueBuild) or with easily reversable overlays, plus an update cadence that offers an excellent middle ground between rolling release and point release — you get all non major version updates to your image's software basically immediately, but major versions wait for every 6 months so they can be integration tested and stuff.
2. And then with Distrobox you get the ability to trivially create a containerized environment with your Linux distribution of choice inside (can be different from the host), that nevertheless integrates almost seamlessly with the host (including having access to all of your hardware devices and your home directory and being able to trivially export applications, as well as easily open a shell inside the container with a simple terminal command), so you can have your cake and eat it too: a fully bleeding edge rolling release distro like Fedora Rawhide or Arch Linux inside your distro box to get the most up to date developer tools, but a more stable system as your host. And if something goes wrong in the container you can easily just blow it away and regenerate it since Distrobox has a declarative container spec (distrobox assemble). For GUI management of Distroboxes check out Pytaxis and BoxBuddy-rs.
There are some things you should know if you go this route though that will save you a lot of pain and frustration:
1. Fedora Atomic is really barebones by default, and since layering is kind of painful it can be really annoying to do the system administration necessary to get it set up; especially if you have an Nvidia card and you have to do all the typical annoying shit you have to do on Linux to set that up. So instead of using vanilla Fedora Atomic, I highly recommend checking out Universal Blue[0], which offers pre-built Fedora Atomic images with all of that annoying setup and system administration done for you already. Their headline images (Bazzite and Bluefin) are really opinionated, but don't worry about that, their base images[1] are perfectly usable too! That's what I use :)
2. Layering packages via rpm-ostree should not be used for just random system utilities or applications. That's not how it is intended to be used, and that way lies only pain. The whole point is that the applications you use as a user, including terminal ones, should be separate from the core system, and not dependent on it, so they can be updated separately and not break each other. Layers, since they are updated by the system package manager, must be versioned in lockstep with the rest of the system, and the system image will fail to build if it can't update the layers you have, so really only use it for things you consider part of your essential OS. People who forget this tend to come away really hating Atomic distros. For your development environment or any build environments you need, create distroboxes and install applications inside them; for GUI applications, just use Flatpak, or install the application inside a distrobox and use distrobox-export to integrate the app into the host. If distrobox feels too heavyweight, or you just want various sundry utilities installed on your host system, then I recommend using something like Homebrew or Nix or Guix or Pkgsrc, that is, any package manager that installs things to your home directory in a way that is cleanly separated from your host system and independently updated. Universal Blue images come with a script to get Homebrew all set up for you. Wouldn't have been my first choice, but its very convenient.
For more on the benefits of this, see this pastebin article I made: https://rentry.co/mm2qcwzh
If you're wondering what the advantage of this is over Nix, the most important to advantages for me are that:
1. Nix's directory structure is basically completely unreadable and unusable for human beings in a way that is far worse than the default posix directory structure
2. Nix requires absolutely every program and package that runs on it to be custom patched to deal with its alternate directory structure, and while sure yes it's package repository is gigantic so a lot of that work is done for you, it can still cause weird problems and make things much more unreliable and good luck if there's a package that isn't there or hasn't been updated for a while. I'm on an emacs Discord and apparently installing it on Nix is very difficult. It's just another layer of possible incompatibility and failure and annoyance on top of the stack of those layers that compose linux.
Meanwhile, you got most of the same benefits on an atomic distro, except:
1. it's all completely human readable
2. uses standardized technology so it's already compatible with everything without having to do any work
3. you can get fully different distros inside distro boxes, unlike with and Nix's equivalent.
The other thing is that with nix, you configure your entire system at a layer of abstraction above what's actually happening on the system — it's not like that declarative config is actually directly deciding how the system operates, no, it's just layered on top of all of the existing crap Linux has going on, and you're just hoping that it can automatically, imperatively perform the actions necessary to keep your system in line with the config.
That, and to get the same level of resistance to entropy and reversibility and ability to power wash and rebase and cherry-pick changes and stuff that you get with an atomic distro on nix, you would have to Version Control your Nix config and then also be very very careful with manually committing with informative commit names at regular intervals every time you make a change and stuff, instead of it being handled automatically for you and not requiring an extra version control tool slapped on top.
Plus, Nix doesn't benefit from the minor, but still meaningful in my opinion, security benefits of an immutable image-based distro.
[0]: https://universal-blue.org/ [1]: https://github.com/orgs/ublue-os/packages [2]: https://distrobox.it/
Also drawbacks for me when using nix:
- I needed to greatly increase boot partiton, because nix stores there linux kernels. Whith dual-booting Windows, I created 2GB partiton at the end of disk. Thankfulluly Windows reused it.
- vscode was having strange laggines on nix.
- nix language is quite strange but also imo taught poorly. This was my attempt to demistify it https://github.com/rofrol/nix-for-javascript-developers.
btw. nice remark about nix beeing declarative but beneath is Linux not-declarative. It is like functional programming, but you still have some internal state of components that can clash with your functional top-down approach.
Yeah. That's what always made me loathe to try it out. I'm glad there's someone else that feels that way.
But 2 weeks ago I installed Linux on my home setup to run 24/7.
There's some seriously dumb issues with it: Ubuntu snaps are terrible with no local fonts in FF and other snap-based software has surprising bugs and crashes you don't realise are the fault of snaps until you waste hours researching it, everybody pushes AppImages but you can't get launcher shortcuts without doing it all manually in a friggin .desktop file* (you could do this 30 years ago in Win3.1 without having to search around for an icon!!!), you can't consistently pin stuff to a taskbar, etc.
But I think I'll be sticking with it all the same. Microsoft could ban my Microsoft account and then what, I can't use my PC anymore?!
* Yes I know there's some software you can download to do it but seriously it's not been updated for ages and this should be core OS GUI functionality. I switched to Debian and KDE which at least has more flexibility.
There's your problem ;)
Mint has been much more user friendly for a long time. I've been on Manjaro for some time now, and I'm quite happy with it.
Basically nothing you’ll want to do is googleable.
I’d recommend arch to a newbie before nix.
Once you get a handle on things, nix is pretty nice.
It's not your computer anymore, it's this computer.
IMO Debian is a pretty good choice if you have hardware that's about 2 to 4 years old or more and don't really care about getting the latest driver updates or advances in the Linux ecosystem, so you should have a better experience there, but if it starts to frustrate you that it takes years for huge fixes and advancements to make their way to you, I really enjoy Fedora. :-)
Also, you mentioned two of the major alternative application packaging formats, snap and appimage, but have you heard of our Lord and savior Flatpak? :p It has all of the benefits of snaps (namely sandboxing, consistent environments and packaging dependencies along with applications, updates directly from upstream, distribution agnostic packaging, and automatic integration with your desktop environment) but none of the downsides (namely far better desktop environment integration thanks to portals and much much faster startup times and no perf impact during runtime unlike snaps). A lot of people talk down about them but I think that's mostly FUD.
(Also, having ancient single-purpose laptops is fantastic. I have one for recreational programming, and that's all I use it for. I have another for curating my music collection, and one for games. They don't need to be fast, or up to date, or power efficient, because I don't use them all the time. But when I do use them, it's nice to have them set up just so for the thing I want to use them for.)
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/lin...
Been great.
Be careful. This is how distros start.
It's so upsetting that Ubuntu went so hard in on Snaps. I just end up with issues caused by their sandboxing with hardware and config access and you end up having to fight to find a normal .deb install for FF instead of that damn default Snap.
I hope the journey isn't too rough for you though - best of luck!
If you want to easily distribute commercial applications, use flatpak. You could even have your own flatpak repo for your own products, if you wanted (it is really just static http).
I agree that the flatpak/appimage/snap options for apps, and in particular commercial apps is a decent idea. I think integration and permissions should probably move to something similar to the UX for phone apps though... it feels weird having to try to configure permissions that should be in the box.
Debian/Mint/etc. are all good distros, but if you're willing to step up the learning curve just a bit, I'd definitely suggest Gentoo. I've been using it as my daily driver for several years now and it's made me feel like I'm actually in control of my machine (compiling all your code with debug flags so you can attach gdb when it's behaving weird so you can write a patch?! And then submit it to get sucked into upstream!? Yes please!). There's definitely a little work up front, but it's without a doubt the best experience I've had with Linux and I'd recommend it if you're up for it.
And in general, desktop Linux is just as buggy and maybe even more half-baked than it was when I started using it in 2007.
But, I own my machines. I don't need to ask permission from a company to be able to log in to my machine. I can install or uninstall whatever the hell I want.
I started with Linux Mint, then Ubuntu. I don't remember which Ubuntu it was, but it had Gnome 2 and then later had fun with the Unity Desktop versions. When they started being the bully, I started distro hopping and then finally settled with Debian (because of my personal values as well). I can't trust a for-profit company to care about its users. Today I try to use as many FOSS alternatives and projects supported by community.
Ubuntu is no better than Windows 11 at this point. It's just lesser evil of two. Try something else, Pop_OS!, Linux Mint, Manjaro Linux, Fedora, etc. Plenty of good options out there. Debian too, if you don't want a solid stable long term OS.
And nowadays that's the same thing you need to do in order to de-bloat Windows.
Don't want to create Microsoft account? Google how to do it, read about pressing a random keyboard shortcut during install, and running a random command in the terminal. This is literally the Linux experience. It's the same thing, now on Windows!
Your tablet doesn't work on Linux? Install OpenTabletDriver from who knows who to fix it! Your Windows doesn't work? Install power tools from who knows who to fix it! Want to bring back the old context menu? Install this. Want to bring back "my" computer? Install that. Want to get rid of OneDrive? Run this .bat file!
If things continue like this one day Microsoft will get rid of backwards compatibility altogether and people will migrate to Linux to run old Windows programs in WINE.
I was uneasy about Ubuntu PPA, that's binaries from unknown source. I prefer AUR, it provides packaging instructions but source trusted by user.
Linux issues possible to investigate, search brings grounded instructions. Windows is closed source, "solutions" is guesswork.
Linux distributions build experiences, maybe there is already group of people like you, issues solved.
Now I do my gaming on GeForce Now as much as possible (soooo much nicer than fighting Windows updates, UAC, game bar, drivers, etc. all the time). And Crossover/Whisky sometimes, Parallels almost never. I wish Proton worked on macos :(
Together this means I can only play maybe 50% of the games I used to be able to (specifically anti cheat can be a problem, if the game doesn't support GFN). But otherwise the small performance penalties are totally worth not having to deal with Windows anymore.
I have separate machines for separate purposes.
I do all my gaming using linux. I haven't used Microsoft's shit since windows 7
I’ve done this around 4 year ago and I’ve literally never felt compelled to move back.
My mind went here too. I know a lot of people questioned the first iteration of "Steam Machine" PCs. Created by independent hardware vendors, with a Steam-flavored Linux distro, a lot of people asked what was the point.
But increasingly, every month that goes by Windows seems to add a new task bar thing you need to disable, something new on the login screen, and now, apparently, changes to something as fundamental as user management. It seems inconceivable that Valve would want to willingly tie their fate to the unpredictable twists and turns that Windows may have in store.
There's still some rough edges but overall Fedora 40 is an amazing Desktop OS which was easy to recreate all my dev tools including: .NET 8, VSCode, JB Toolbox/Rider/DataGrip/etc, GH CLI/Desktop, Docker/lazydocker, Ollama, AWS CLI, Discord, Obsidian, with PostgreSQL/MySQL/SQL Server/Redis running in Docker, effortlessly installed node/bun/go/python with mise, even all my major titled Windows games are working under Steam/Proton which was a pleasant surprise.
With Windows 10 nearing EOL I believe Linux Desktop is at the turning point for market share now that Microsoft is turning the crank with Windows 11 and turning it into an ad/spyware marketing channel for their Apps and cloud services.
Fedora 40/Wayland worked beautifully out-of-the-box with buttery smooth DE animations which unfortunately started flickering after installing NVidia's proprietary drivers which should be fixed with explicit sync [1] in NVidia's latest 560 drivers which is now available in KDE Plasma 6.1 update, hopefully it'll be available for Gnome in a system update soon - looking forward to running Wayland again.
[1] https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2024/04/05/explicit-sync...
Considered Pop!_OS but they're running an older version of Ubuntu and are in the middle of transitioning to their new Rust Cosmic Desktop which I figured would be immature at launch.
I ended up going with Fedora as IMO it was the more bleeding edge with new software, e.g. Wayland by default and their new Atomic Desktops look like they could be the future.
Previously the laptop had Windows 10 on it and there were no Bluetooth or reboot issues. Unfortunately, Windows 11 doesn't work on it and 10 is rapidly approaching EoL.
The machine has previously had Ubuntu on it, but that was a few years ago. Ubuntu didn't have any problems so either it's Fedora-specific or kernel or driver changes since then are the root cause.
It's actually the Wayland compositor itself on the Steam Deck.
dnf upgrade --releasever=41 --refresh xorg-x11-drv-nvidiaBooted into Windows once a year, maybe twice. Deleted Windows altogether in January.
Works perfectly for me. Gaming, development especially, and so on.
Interestingly, my company is considering ditching Windows altogether since we're on 10, and know what 11 is like, and going full Linux desktops since that's all we develop on anyway.
I only keep a Windows 11 partition around for SteamVR as my Quest 2 headset is a bit awkward to get working well under Linux. This problem will be rectified when Valve release a successor to the Index headset. All of my other games run just fine on Fedora.
Linux on the desktop is a calm and sane respite compared to the ever more shrill and needy interruptions from Windows wanting its ass wiped.
And yes, it was seeing Microsoft get worse and worse until a lead weight broke too many camels backs.
Security issues with the XP/IE/ActiveX axis of evil made using Windows feel like taking a shot to the groin on a daily basis. Then they brought out Vista. If you survived that, you must have been dedicated.
The easiest way!
Windows is lost…
There are also some email ids (e.g. no@email.net ) in the sign up fields which allows you to create local accounts.
Not that these workarounds excuse all this user hostile behavior.
It disables a bunch of features and will likely never enable them like CoPilot, Windows Store etc.
If you really must suffer Windows its worth seeing if it has the features you need.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/iot-enterprise...
Am I missing something? Like many workarounds mentioned in this thread, this certainly doesn't seem to be one the average Windows user could reasonably take advantage of.
That has reputable downloads, and the main page discusses paths to activation.
everybody is doing it. Its the norm now. Either make it so nobody can do it or criticize everyone.
...For an account has been open for 23 years.
Additionally, Microsoft's decision to plague Windows with advertisements and Copilot was terrible. Windows is otherwise a damn good OS, and I wish the engineers had a say over the marketing and Copilot departments at MS. I also wish the UI/UX department didn't suddenly decide that macOS was a shining bastion of good desktop UX, i.e. favouring icons over text.
I'm going to link another comment of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40541721
After setting up I log in to OneDrive and Microsoft anyway; I have an Office 365 subscription (the competition here absolutely sucks) and I'd like my game achievements in XBox Live.
I still use Windows, and I probably will continue to use it despite all this. Unlike the rest of the commenters here, I actually like using and writing for Windows.
Desktop-on-Linux is broken if you have any reasonable multi-monitor HiDPI set-up with an NVIDIA GPU. I personally don't care which company/entity is responsible; as an end-user, it is broken, full stop. I'm also not fond of the OS-as-an-IDE mentality; I like a right proper IDE with a green play button and red circles. I was never comfortable with the command-line, and I remain so, having been entirely raised on Windows. Proton is nice, but what's nicer is never having to bother about compatibility because one is running the platform the game was written on and for.
I faffed around with macOS and I use it at work, but writing programs for Macs is ridiculously painful (and dare I say, expensive) after Apple introduced the requirement to sign + notarise stuff. I'm also not a big fan of the post-OS X Lion workflow when the 'Save As' button was removed.
[1]: https://superuser.com/questions/1148991/why-does-windows-10-...
The easiest way around this whole issue is to just sign in with a Microsoft account during set up, but once logged in, create yourself a local admin account and log in with that, and then delete the first account that was created. I find this easier rather than trying to work around the initial set up process.
You can create an win 11 iso with some custom settings (e.g. "remove requirement for an online Microsoft account)
edit: ok, its already mentioned in the article, sorry :o
Windows 10 was pretty easy to convert to a htpc or arcade box. Windows 11 not so much, feels like I’m running a rolling release run by someone who doesn’t care about user experience
I for one run an old win10 just for gaming and some legacy software. Will keep until EOL of win10 and then check alternatives
Just like an Linux is horrible for doing video editing, not sure that comparison makes sense. Pick the right system for your workload.
Doesn't Davinci Resolve run well on Linux? I've heard most VFX and Animation work is done on Linux workstations and render farms.
Really it's just the absence of Adobe and a few beginner-friendly tools, I'd say.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/VFX-Animation-Linux-Recommends
I haven't done video editing on Linux for awhile, Lightworks is generally pretty ok, but I don't really know of any equivalent to After Effects or Apple Motion available on Linux, at least in the consumer space. I don't really do enough interesting stuff with video for that to bother me but I suspect that could be a blocker for a lot of people.
Same story here, I think the usability of Windows 10 LTSC IoT is pretty much unmatched.
It'll get security updates until 2032, doesn't have preinstalled bloat like crandy crush or the Microsoft store, lets you reschedule updates freely, and has the expanded features of Pro/Enterprise editions (group policies, RDP, Bitlocker, etc)
In a couple of years I bet that has changed.
Yeah you're not going to run top end games at 4k on them but most people don't do that either. And the market for optimising them towards the large market scope makes sense.
Example of what is already on the market and in people's pockets. You can connect a controller and 4k display to it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRAOBEtQ_MY
https://mobilegamer.biz/those-assassins-creed-resident-evil-...
I think it really depends on which games you want to play. I basically only play 2... and they both seem to run quite well.
I realize that that is an atypical experience, though.
To be fair, this is HN
There's some iCloud integration, but I don't think your login is an iCloud account, it's just a local account.
Then you put Windows on a new machine and you remember that that Microsoft still exists. The thing is riddled with value-squeezing bullshit, like a stupid homepage in your browser filled with clickbaity crap, ads, requirements to sign up for an account just to use your own damn computer, etc.
I guess one of the benefits of Microsoft being able to operate with different cultures within the company is that, for example, they haven't killed GitHub the way that Google killed so many acquisitions. The problem though is that there not getting any culturally beneficial benefits back into their core and keep pumping a very crappy OS.
License is a bit of a challenge but with the 180 trail days and how little I actually use it I can afford to do a fresh installation every few months and be ok.
It’s kind of sad given than windows itself, at least the core OS used in windows server is rock solid… but when you go to the user offerings of windows 10/11 is such a stark contrast and crappy/unstable experience!
And, instead of speaking to law enforcement we move into the abuser’s bedroom and stop wearing underwear.
Makes perfect sense.
I understand that Windows has a lot of exclusive software, but damn do I feel bad for those who need to use it. It's a real piece of trash compared to my mental "golden years" being in Windows 7.
Despite the meme, I've had a consistently good (and getting better) experience with the Linux desktop since I switched full time about four and a half years ago (with a lot of part time use before hand). There are definitely some things that come up that I know how to deal with because I work with Linux on a daily basis or I've seen it before, but we are making great progress towards it being a _very_ user friendly operating system.
Except they've gone from being horrible to developers, to being horrible to normal, non-technical users.
Everyone in the Linux community has known this would be the outcome since forever. There have been a million small abuses on the road to here. And I get that everyone has their reasons for using Windows and other proprietary software but the strangulation was plain as day. So:
For all the flack that folks here give militant believers such as Stallman et. al., you can thank them and every other FOSS dev for keeping the alternative alive. Imagine a world where there was no alternative. You don't deserve to have your attention hijacked or to be forced into a cloud contract just because you want to use your hardware. Hate to say we told you so but you can come to the fold anyway. Welcome to freedom.
I was as critical as anyone over Stallman until the Snowden leaks happened. It felt clear to me that these tech companies will very happily get rid of our privacy the second it's convenient for them, and while I should have known that before, I guess I brushed that off as paranoid thinking.
I still use a fair amount of proprietary software and web services, such is the way in 2024, but I try and be much more aware of what information I'm sharing and storing. Once my current Macbook dies or once the Linux ports for the T2 Macs is actually usable, I'll move to a proper Linux distro and be rid of most of the Apple ecosystem in my workflow.
You're just stuck in a loop. Luckily I was able to bridge my phones internet connection. Then in Windows it was able to start installing device drivers.
It's a shame that toothless regulators can't do anything about it. Microsoft should received such a large fine, they should end up on the brink of bankruptcy.
There's no law or regulation that requires computer makers to always allow operation and set-up while offline.
...I think having a law to require MS to allow offline set-up by all users would be an overreach, but a reasonable alternative would be to require Microsoft to sell Windows LTSC to anyone who asks for it, not just Software Assurance and MSDN Subscribers.
Why? Do you think it would lead to a better or worse world?
Your options are to simply not use microsoft windows. it is a cost that is borne by you (ala the switching cost).
There can be no such an option where you get to keep what you have, but also legislate exactly what you desire, without paying any of the costs.
I understand that there are downsides to over-regulating, but there are also downsides to under-regulating.
HOW? Until now we haven't needed a law because OS developers haven't been this brazen. In any case there are likely actually a few laws that can be used to litigate the you shouldn't need to be online to install and setup a computer. I'll bet that if they don't fix it themselves a class action will be incoming n citing privacy or child safety or maybe some other laws.
Microsoft can choose to support or not support offline accounts. Users can decide if they care and if they'd rather use something other than Windows. What's the problem exactly?
What legal line could be drawn to allow the government to regulate this without regulating all kinds of product and business decisions? Would it be reasonable for them to regulate what colors of crayons must be included in ever box of Crayola crayons? And if not, what is the legal boundry allowing them to say what features an OS has without allowing the crayon regulation?
Its not about doing good or bad things, and I don't see myself as having cucked out either. Someone will do what I consider a bad thing whether or not there are laws saying they shouldn't. And ultimately, who am I to say what they can't do as long as it isn't stepping on anyone else's rights?
In this more specific topic, I don't like how Microsoft has been setting any semblance of privacy on fire but I also don't see why I would need the government to fix that. Consumers have other choices, and if people care enough it will hit Microsoft's bottom dollar. With regards to Teams, I have actually been on teams where that tool was so broadly hated that they wouldn't use it whether free or not. If Microsoft was somehow blocking other chat apps on Windows that'd be a whole other ball game.
Microsoft isn't Uber. Their moat is decades of work on kernels, drivers and backwards compatibility that can't be replicated overnight by a competitor. If they self-immolate to chase some idiotic AI/cloud fad, that does a large amount of real economic damage.
I don't even know if I want any regulations in the tech industry, especially after all the e2e encryption bullshit everyone (especially my country's government) is trying to pull. But if I did, this would be right at the top of the list for risk/reward. If cloud sync and AI are so good then sell cloud sync and AI, don't risk established markets to try and flog it off on people that don't want it with dark patterns.
I don't see something like an operating system nearly on the level of worth protecting for a couple reasons. Humans can live just fine without operating systems and computers, and we can certainly live with or without support for local accounts. Additionally, there are other operating systems to choose so even if that's a red line for someone consumers still have options.
I can say I'd have less opposition to such specific laws if they came with an expiration date. At least in the US we don't do that and we end up with an ever growing list of laws that are either irrelevant or out of touch with future generations' morales or ethics.
So as a citizen, it is your right to access publicly funded services, right? So then by extension, the tools to access those services should be a fundamental right in a modern technological society. And moreso, you should have the right to own those tools outright without molestation by large corporate entities... Fuck, Microsoft isn't even a large corporation... It is a behemoth, 3.3 Trillion market cap! I think they, and their competitors, could stand to be saddled with some more regulation to insure a baseline OS for the citizenry of this county, and other countries. It's not like it's going to hurt their profit margins that much to comply!
Hah, well I'm definitely on the same page with this part! Companies shouldn't be given such massive legal cover that they can accumulate this level of wealth and power.
That said, I'm still not so sure I agree with computers being a fundamental right. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and for something fundamental it really should be something that can't be taken from you, aka inalienable rights in my opinion. Life in the US is certainly harder without a computer today, but is it really a right that needs to be legally enshrined?
Would this logic extend similarly to cars, phones, or air conditioning? They're all in the category of items I think everyone ought to have access to, but I don't think they're so fundamental to human life that governments must enforce that access.
I'm big on small governments in general though. I may just be seeing slippery slope here when that isn't warranted.
Honestly, no - it wouldn't be considering that for many decades we could use Windows without being connected to Microsoft cloud services.
At the moment MS is "only" enforcing an online account during OOBE.* The next step will be an unavoidable Windows-as-as-service product with "subscribe to remove ads and unlock xyz feature" - that's the goal they're heading for years.
They could do as simple as having two versions of OS: Windows Free with ads, telemetry, mandatory online account and a paid Windows Pro with all these limitations gone, with an offline account and more control for the end-user. And that's what the regulators, govt's agencies should really make happen. Sadly they prefer working over content scanning and damaging encryption, violating our privacy while pleasing entertainment industry with wild goose-chasing pirates.
[*] - last time I check in W10, singing out right after OOBE and reverting to a local account still puts residual traces all around the profile to the point that you never are truly signed out.
In the past it took a lot of work to use alternatives. Today it is so easy.
In a large domain of things windows is still a monopoly.
Easy, as long as you are a technical user, who is willing to invest time in learning alternative tools and also willing to sometimes sacrifice some time to get appropriate results using alternative software than the mainstream Windows tools.
A lot is possible using other OS and alternative tooling, but it takes commitment and possibly time to learn. Many people are not willing to relearn tools of their professions or even for their hobbies. It really takes an open minded and willing person to listen to their engineering friend and give other tools chances and time and potentially even make a jump to a command line mindset.
Most people, compared to software developers and engineers, are almost computer illiterates. They are happy, when the thing turns on and looks as it always looks and they see some familiar icon for a web browser. Probably never before has the need for educating people about computers and what they can do with them been so huge. The resulting incentives from not educating people about such have terrible results for our whole industry/profession.
Linux tends to cause strange issues if you get unlucky.
Within the last year I've had to just try a different distro since Ubuntu didn't support my hardware. On a different PC I'm on Mint now.
Years upon years ago I gave someone a PC with Ubuntu installed. A week later he just asked how do I install League of Legends. The simple answer is install Windows.
90% of people don't want you to "educate" them about why struggling with the Linux CLI is a better use of their time than whatever else they had planned.
Back in the day when we still had a government that enforced anti-compete laws against mega corporations, Microsoft was found guilty, and nearly broken up, over simply including Internet Explorer by default. If we still had any government willing to crack down on anti-competitive behavior, I think the entire tech world would be in a far better place. The EU is ostensibly trying, but I suspect even that will largely just come down to companies accepting moderate sized fines every once in a while as business expense in the EU.
While not all cases, one might be surprised how many could use Linux without issue if someone else installs and configures it for them. Much like Windows is installed and configured by someone else when the system is new.
(They're quite capable of running a Linux box, it's the games and Office 365 Full Version [which doesn't do well in Wine] when LibreOffice won't quite do the job. They've heard the good news about Proton. But I think it's a sign that Microsoft is repelling the gamer kids too.)
I have had non-technical friends get so fed up with Windows that they're willing to try Linux. One of my friends is just loving Ubuntu except that he can't seem to get his printer to work. I should poke around with it.
These windows users are and have been trained not to think. It is best to keep them locked in and unaware.
My gripe is that an os that generates revenue isn't getting taxed. Like coin mining or in game loot drops.
Given the limitations, still I feel, using GNU/Linux is better than Windows for most use cases like surfing web, Terminals, LibreOffice, SW development etc...
I would happily pay MS for an OS that was zero bloat and only included the core functionality to support sim racing and the 3rd party hardware.
The quality of Windows is poor. Fedora is actually a great OS. Windows is among the Debian/Ubuntu/Mint tiers of OS, kind of crappy but kind of works.
IME it's very difficult, and for intents and purposes here from a user perspective, it is the exact same thing. Further we've found it's also impossible to create an account without handing over credit card details. Please call it what it is instead of wringing your hands - dark patterns.
I just got done setting up my 3rd work Macbook in about 8 years and every single time the credit card thing gets me. Back and forth through the app store setup 4-5 times, about to finally cave and add a personal credit card into a work laptop because I can't figure out how the fuck to install something and my team is waiting for me to get setup, then on the 5th go round I finally figure out that the credit card ribbon has a "none" icon.
They know full fucking well that every single person on the planet reads a ribbon of credit card icons as "visa, mastercard, blah blah blah blah". If that's not intentional I'll eat my fucking desk.
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40775301
(but you don't really get stuff like shaders)
The C++ rewrite depends on Windows APIs, and it is much less flexible/moddable than the Java version. It does support playing with consoles and mobile, though.
Please, don't forget how many people online (including here on HN) repeated the astroturf propaganda about how "Microsoft has changed" and "Nadella's not Gates and Ballmer" when Nadella first took over. Don't forget how anyone who dared type "EEE" was called a troll or at least stubborn and stuck in the past.
Microsoft sucks. They are a hostile company who absolutely abuses their market position and will never--ever--think twice about it. I don't want to hear whataboutism for Google and Apple--I have my complaints for them, too. But, I'm really bitter about how well the Nadella-MS marketing campaign worked on devs and IT people.
But, at least Microsoft "hearts" open source, right?
You have engaged in wrong-think, so we have disabled your windows account and deleted all your docs in the cloud.
Regards,
Microsoft."
At some point OS vendors were forced to point to alternative browsers. Should the setup not also point to competitors like rsync.net?
That's just saying 'others are also doing awful things' which is no excuse at all - while ignoring the fact this is a single-node operating system paid for by you, and deployed on a machine you own.
To be more fair, make it easy for me to use local authentication and have zero reliance on (or exposure) to a potentially exploited [0] auth systems.
Maybe they want to see how many times the EU can come down on them in 2024.
Every successful OS hides the terminal and allows you to fix 99% of problems without having to copy+paste cryptic commands from a random website into a console.
Linux has so much promise but distro devs chronically keep leaning hard on the apache helicopter cockpit UI (the terminal) when the first thing mainstream OS devs do is turn the UI into a Honda Civic.
Yes, I have been on linux for 2 years now, and ready to go back to windows (again). If I had the time I'd learn how to make a distro just so I could make something that seasoned linux users would hate (and would actually be popular for once).
Why would a more conventional distro want to appeal to non-technical users? Even technical users don’t often contribute code or good bug reports. But non-technical users can’t.
Most config options are in Settings and don't recall using the Terminal for much outside the above context, where I would do the same in Windows (WSL) or Mac.
If people keep using it, cool. If not, they'll release Windows 12 "now with zero ads and bloat!" and people will come flocking back from their year or so of Linux frustrations (there will be more than a few).
Or maybe they are trying to prepare us for buying v12 soon ? :>
Also: I planned to stay on Win10 for gaming but they makes "W*" so disgusting that will move to Linux as soon as free time comes. And that is tomorrow ! Hurray !